Undone

Steven Furtick - photo by Cheyenne Schultz

From the Elevation Church website, where Steven is the Lead Pastor:

Pastor Steven grew up in Moncks Corner, South Carolina where at age 16 he realized God’s plan for him to start a life-changing church in a metropolitan city.

This vision became a tangible reality when Elevation was founded on the faith of 8 families who risked everything – sold houses, quit jobs and moved to Charlotte believing that God would turn this city upside down for his glory through the local church. That risk has resulted in a remarkable return.

At the three year mark, we’ve grown to more than 5,000 in attendance each week between three campuses and we’ve seen over 3,000 people receive Christ. In 2007 and 2008, our church was named one of the 10 fastest growing churches in America.

The heart of Pastor Steven’s message is revolutionary faith and how to approach every experience from a visionary perspective. As a leader under 30 years old, his unique passion for seeing God’s purposes fulfilled is igniting a fire here in our city and beyond.

Pastor Steven attended North Greenville University, received a B.A. in communications and went on to complete a Master of Divinity from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He resides in the Charlotte area with his wife, Holly, and two sons Elijah and Graham.

Photo by Erik Stenbakken

From The Simple Way website:

With tears and laughter, Shane unveils the tragic messes we’ve made of our world and the tangible hope that another world is possible. Shane graduated from Eastern University, and did graduate work at Princeton Seminary. His ministry experience is varied, from a 10-week stint working alongside Mother Teresa in Calcutta, to a year spent serving a wealthy mega-congregation at Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago.

During the recent war in Iraq, Shane spent three weeks in Baghdad with the Iraq Peace Team (a project of Voices in the Wilderness and Christian Peacemaker Teams). Shane was witness to the military bombardment of Baghdad as well as the militarized areas between Baghdad and Amman. As a member of IPT, Shane took daily trips to sites where there had been bombings, visited hospitals and families, and attended worship services during the war.

Shane is a founding partner of The Simple Way, a faith community in inner city Philadelphia that has helped to birth and connect radical faith communities around the world, many of whom have become known as a “new monasticism”, which produced the book Schools for Conversion. These communities seek to follow Jesus, to rediscover the spirit of the early Church, and to incarnate the “Kingdom of God” — a way of life standing in stark contrast to the world of militarism and materialism. At the Simple Way, their little revolution is lived out locally, as days are spent feeding hungry folks, doing collaborative arts with children, running a community store, hanging out with neighbors, and reclaiming trash-strewn lots by planting gardens. Shane and The Simple Way do much work to expose the fundamental structures that create poverty and to imagine alternatives to them.

Shane serves on the Board of Directors for The Christian Community Development Association, one of the largest national associations of faith-based organizations whose pillars are Redistribution, Relocation, and Reconciliation. Shane writes and travels extensively speaking about peacemaking, social justice, and Jesus. He is featured in the DVD series “Another World Is Possible” and is the author of the several books including The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President.